The Hemispheric Institute and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage of the Smithsonian Institution present:
Indigenous Cinema '21
A series of short and feature films from across the hemisphere with a focus on Indigenous voices, languages, and new narratives
Curated by Amalia Córdova
In the midst of the digital turn and the global crises brought about over the past year, Indigenous artists and activists have found new spaces for their works to be more broadly seen. Indigenous media has been growing over the past four decades, documenting community practices, but also exploring new modes of expression through a range of themes, languages and genres. As new, layered forms of understanding identity emerge, film has proven to be an adaptable medium to explore the interlacing of Indigenous experiences that are in motion, seeking wholeness despite fragmentation, and not restricted to the binaries of urban and rural, ancestral and contemporary, female and male, and more. What we are seeing today is a multiplicity of Indigenous voices and modes of storytelling, told through the moving image. We are pleased to bring a sampling of this new tide of Indigenous cinemas, alternating recent shorts and feature films, some of them made in New York, and others from across the continent.
1
| Title: |
Uu?uu~tah
|
| Release Date: |
2019 |
| Runtime: |
11 minutes |
| Director: |
Chad Charlie (Ahousaht/Canada) |
| Language: |
Nuu-chah-nulth with English subtitles |
| Synopsis: |
In a pre-Contact era, a young chief is entrusted to be the whale hunter of his village. With this title comes a lot of responsibility. To undertake such a task, his grandmother leads him along the long hard path of his rite of purification and growth. |
| Director Bio: |
Chad Charlie is the director behind the film. He is an enrolled member of the Ahousaht First Nation in Canada, while raised in Seattle. Chad's directorial debut film Uu?uu~tah, documented entirely in his traditional language, continues to be screened in film festivals worldwide, and can be seen on select channels in Canada. With the support of a number of organizations like Nia Tero, Vision Maker Media, and Storyhive, Chad has become an emerging filmmaker with a whole lot of power behind his stories. |
| Title: |
Mino Bimaadiziwin
|
| Release Date: |
2017 |
| Runtime: |
10 minutes |
| Director: |
Ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby (Kchi Wiikwedong Anishinaabe) |
| Language: |
Anishinaabe and English |
| Synopsis: |
Jim Asiginaak, a transgender Anishinaabe man, has lost all connection to his Native culture until he has a chance meeting with a mysterious Anishinaabe woman, Bangishimogikwe. |
| Director Bio: |
Ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby was born into the turtle clan of the Anishinaabe Nation and raised in his traditional territories now known as Grand Rapids, MI. He is a citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. Upon receiving his Bachelor's degree from Grand Valley State University in film production, Ishkwaazhe moved to New York City. There he wrote Mino Bimaadiziwin, his first short film to receive major funding from Sundance Institute as a part of the Indigenous Film Program. Ishkwaazhe is currently in his third year of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film Program. |
| Title: |
La Lluvia Fue Testigo/Witness Was the Rain
|
| Release Date: |
2018 |
| Runtime: |
27 minutes |
| Director: |
Nicolás Soto Guerra (Mapuche-Huilliche/Chile) |
| Language: |
Spanish with English subtitles |
| Synopsis: |
The lush landscapes of southern Chile witnessed the life and absence of José Huenante from his childhood until his disappearance at the hands of the police in 2005. Today an image of his face fills the streets of the city of Puerto Montt with the slogan: "detainee disappeared in democracy." |
| Director Bio: |
Nicolás Soto Guerra (Puerto Montt, 1994) is a filmmaker and television producer with a degree from the Universidad de Chile. Throughout his academic career, he has held a number of positions working on cinematography and documentary film. In 2017, he started production for his documentary film La Lluvia Fue Testigo/Witness Was the Rain, a capstone project for his degree in audiovisual production, which has screened at various film festivals, both in Chile and abroad, winning him a number of awards and marking the initial phase of development for his first full-length documentary film. |
2
| Title: |
Dauna: Gone With the River/Dauna. Lo que lleva el río
|
| Release Date: |
2014 |
| Runtime: |
104 minutes |
| Director: |
Mario Crespo (Venezuela) |
| Language: |
Warao and Spanish with English subtitles |
| Synopsis: |
Dauna dared to be different. She faced the ancestral practices of her culture and she paid the price. She made decisions that led to her own suffering, as well as the suffering of others. She didn’t give up in the face of defeat; instead, she was reconciled with her losses, and became part of a legend herself. |
| Director Bio: |
Mario Crespo is a filmmaker and director with over 40 years of experience in film and television. He received his degree in Art History from the Universidad de La Habana in Cuba, and was part of the founding class of students at the School of TV and Film at San Antonio de los Baños. He has worked as director and screenwriter with the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). He has received international recognition for his feature length films, including Dauna. Lo que lleva el río, which was selected as an entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars in 2016. |
3
| Title: |
Bronx Llaktamanta/From the Bronx
|
| Release Date: |
2016 |
| Runtime: |
5 minutes |
| Director: |
Doris Loayza |
| Language: |
English |
| Synopsis: |
Bronx Llaktamanta is a profile of Segundo Angamarca, an Ecuadorian immigrant who founded and hosts Radio Tambo Stereo, a Kichwa-language radio station in the Bronx, NY. |
| Director Bio: |
Doris Loayza is a native Quechua and Spanish speaker, educator, and multimedia producer from Peru who now lives in Bloomington, IN. She is the Quechua Language Instructor at CU Boulder, and teaches high school Spanish in Bloomington. Doris moved to New York City in 2007, and in 2014, she earned a Masters in Latin American & Caribbean Studies from NYU, where she helped to organize Andean cultural activities and produced a Quechua language podcast. Bronx Llaktamanta has been shown at the United Nations, universities, and other venues. |
| Title: |
First Voices
|
| Release Date: |
2010 |
| Runtime: |
11 minutes |
| Director: |
Amalia Córdova (Diaguita/Chile) |
| Language: |
English and Lakota |
| Synopsis: |
New York City is home to some eighty thousand Native people. From WBAI's studios in lower Manhattan, the weekly independent radio show First Voices Indigenous Radio, hosted by Tiokasin Ghosthorse, a member of the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota, connects voices from Indian Country to everyday struggles of first peoples everywhere. This is the story of a man's art and life dedicated to creating change through a Native airspace from the heart of New York City to the world. |
| Director Bio: |
Amalia Córdova is a Latinx digital curator at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She is a former Latin American specialist for the Film + Video Center of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. She joined New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study as part-time faculty in 2011 and later served as assistant director of NYU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. |
| Title: |
Justicia sin palabras/Mute Justice
|
| Release Date: |
2011 |
| Runtime: |
29 minutes |
| Director: |
Sergio Julián Caballero (Mixtec/México) |
| Language: |
Huave, Triqui, Zapotec & Spanish with English subtitles |
| Synopsis: |
Mute Justice shines a light on the serious injustices of a judicial system that does not guarantee access to Indigenous language interpreters. This documentary aims to raise awareness about the linguistic rights of Indigenous peoples. Through personal testimonies with different actors, Indigenous people who have been incarcerated and their families, officials working in the justice system, and academics, it provides a look at the state which controls these rights. |
| Director Bio: |
Sergio Julián Caballero is originally from the Mixtec community of San Antonio Huitepec. He is a founding member of Comunicación Indígena S. C. (Ojo de Agua Comunicación), which was started in 1998. His background is in videography and video editing, and over the course of his career he has edited more than 100 documentaries with filmmakers from Indigenous communities. These include: Justicia sin palabras, Sembradores de agua y vida, La videocarta: Saludos desde el pueblo que dice no a la minería, among others. Since 2006 he has organized community trainings for radio projects. |
4
| Title: |
Mele Murals
|
| Release Date: |
2016 |
| Runtime: |
57 minutes |
| Director: |
Tadashi Nakamura (Hawai'i/USA) |
| Language: |
English and 'Ōlelo Hawai'i (Hawaiian) with English subtitles |
| Synopsis: |
Two world-famous graffiti artists, Estria Miyashiro (Kanaka Maoli), aka Estria, and John Hina (Kanaka Maoli), aka Prime, are tasked with teaching the art of 'writing' to a group of students at Kanu o ka 'Āina New Century Public Charter School in Waimea on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Together, the sharing of traditional and contemporary cultures, mo'olelo 'aina (stories of a place), and mele (song), create a new form of expressive art that is purely Hawaiian. |
| Director Bio: |
Tadashi Nakamura was named one of CNN's 'Young People Who Rock' for being the youngest filmmaker at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. The fourth-generation Japanese American's film Mele Murals was broadcast on PBS and Al Jazeera, receiving 14 awards at film festivals around the world. Nakamura has an M.A. in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz and a B.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. |
5
| Title: |
Identidad/Identity
|
| Release Date: |
2017 |
| Runtime: |
4 minutes |
| Director: |
Iván Jaripio (Embera/Panamá) |
| Language: |
no dialogue |
| Synopsis: |
This experimental short reflects on the dangers facing Indigenous communities—the erasure of their traditions, the razing of their territory and the wiping away of their culture. |
| Director Bio: |
Iván Jaripio is from the Embera community of Piriati. Since 2013, he has been studying film in order to promote the rights of Indigenous people so that their voices are heard. He is part of Dji Ta Wagadi, an Embera youth cultural collective. Jaripio accompanied the Guardians of the Forest tour through Europe to COP23, filming and editing. |
| Title: |
El Encierro/The Confinement
|
| Release Date: |
2012 |
| Runtime: |
16 minutes |
| Director: |
Emanuel Rojas (Colombia) |
| Language: |
Wayunaiki with Spanish subtitles |
| Synopsis: |
A young Wayuu woman undergoes a traditional ritual to make the transition to adulthood. Her confinement marks her entry as a new woman of her community. |
| Director Bio: |
Emanuel Rojas received his degree in Television and Film from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he first started working with Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, doing film photography for La sombra del Caminante. He has continued to collaborate with both on their three latest films, including the Oscar-nominated El abrazo de la serpiente/Embrace of the Serpent, where he worked on camera. As director and cinematographer, Rojas has made dozens of short films and documentaries around indigeneity in Guajira, the Amazon, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cauca region of Colombia—all of which are reflected in the photobook Luces Mágicas, published in France. Currently, he is preparing his first feature length film titled Fronteras Vivientes. |
| Title: |
El Destetado/The Foreign Body
|
| Release Date: |
2018 |
| Runtime: |
19 minutes |
| Director: |
Héctor Silva Núñez (France/Venezuela) |
| Language: |
Spanish and Wayuunaiki with English subtitles |
| Synopsis: |
Jairo is a Native young man from Venezuela who was born with no nipples. Distanced from the customs of his people, he explores a male ideal to belong to in the city. |
| Director Bio: |
Héctor Silva Núñez was born in Cabimas, Venezuela. He studied scriptwriting at the School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV), Cuba. His short film Anfibio (15') premiered at Cinéfondation in Cannes. His second short film The Foreign Body (18') had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Héctor is currently writing and developing his first feature film. |
